E-mailE-mail or electronic mail is a method of communication that uses the links provided by a network, the addresses for senders and receivers provided by some naming scheme, and send and receive capabilities supplied by specialized mail software to let users send and receive messages. With e-mail, it's possible to send text, graphics, and other types of data to one recipient (or thousands of recipients)--using only your computer, your modem and Internet access.
E-mail has many advantages over other forms of communication.
E-mail can act like a letter, a fax and a telephone call, and often like all three at once.
By partaking of the qualities of privacy, direct transmission, and informal, casual communication, e-mail offers an incredibly valuable combination of characteristics.
Although e-mail has many positive qualities, it's not a perfect medium of communication. Here's why:
Although Internet e-mail can be a valuable means of communication, it's also a way to let the world through your door. Sometimes this means that undesirable messages and behavior will come your way.
E-mail operations resemble those of the US Postal Service. Each message has an address and a return address. E-mail servers on the Internet use the addressing information contained within messages to deliver them directly to their intended recipients. An e-mail message contains two basic parts, a header and the body. The header includes all of the addressing and routing information needed to properly transmit and track the message. The body supplies all the textual information being sent, and any items that may be attached to the message. Attachments may include additional multiple files (i.e., graphics, compressed archives, word processor files, etc.) to be transmitted as part of the e-mail message.
E-mail clients are those software packages that retrieve pending messages from your ISP's POP (Post Office Protocol) server, so you can view and respond to them. There are many good e-mail clients available, so you do need to explore the alternatives before making a final choice. Most e-mail packages cannot import messages from other e-mail clients, so once you choose a package, all the e-mail within that package can be viewed only by that package. You will also want to pay attention to the e-mail software's layout and ease of use, because you will probably be spending a lot of time with this program.
An e-mail client's most basic operation is sending and receiving messages. Most ISPs use SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) to handle Internet e-mail, so your client software should support this TCP/IP-based standard as a matter of course.
Internet e-mail messages usually come in great profusion, and there will be numerous messages your users will want to keep around. Therefore, managing messages is an important capability to examine in any e-mail package. Such packages usually let you create folders named for specific topics to organize and store selected messages. The ability to move and copy messages from one folder to another is also useful. Other common file management operations include saving a message to a file, printing messages, and deleting messages. These features will be important in helping you manage your e-mail correspondence.
Handling attachments--other types of data and files appended to e-mail messages--is essential for most users. When selecting an e-mail package, pay close attention to the types of file encoding supported. Depending on your platform, MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions), UUEncoding and BinHex are current standards. If you plan on sending attachments to users on a variety of platforms, consider only e-mail packages that support all three of these encoding methods.
An address book, which contains an alphabetized listing of e-mail addresses (usually organized by human, rather than e-mail names) is an indispensable feature. Each time you create a message you will need to include the deli address. Internet e-mail addresses are comprised of a username and a domain name, located on either side of the @ symbol. For example, Michael Stewart's e-mail address is mcintyre@io.com. Most e-mail addresses are difficult to remember, so a built-in address book will simplify and streamline e-mail use. Consider only those packages whose address books can store information other than e-mail addresses. (Real names, fax and phone numbers, and postal address are also handy to have at your finger tips, so why not keep all that information in the same place?)
Timers are useful for automating checking for incoming or outgoing mail while you may be working with other applications. Timers work like alarm clocks: they "go off" at regular (usually settable) intervals, and keep users apprised of e-mail deli.
An e-mail package should allow you to respond to messages easily, and give you options for replying only to the sender, or to all recipients of the original message. Options for including the previous message should include bracketing/indenting (to offset the original message from the reply), the ability to intersperse new text within quoted text, and forwarding messages to new recipients.
You will need to select an e-mail package based on the types of computer platform you use. Each package will include its own instructions regarding installation, configuration, and setup. If you have difficulty with a package you can contact the author, vendor, or your ISP for assistance. For a list of Internet e-mail software packages, use an Internet Search utility with "email" or "e-mail" as the query string.